Camden Father Blames DYFS For Child's Death
Council Wants Answers

POSTED: 6:00 am EDT June 27, 2005
UPDATED: 10:44 pm EDT June 27, 2005

CAMDEN, N.J. -- As authorities began investigating why police failed to search a car trunk where three missing boys were found dead, the father of one of the children said Sunday he could not understand how they died so close to home.


Anibal Cruz, 38, said the family assumed that police looked in the trunk of the car that was parked just steps from where the boys were last seen playing.

"That was the first place to look," Cruz said. "You can look through the windows and check inside. That is simple. Maybe they should have looked in the trunk."

Officials said the boys suffocated after climbing into the trunk on their own. Their bodies were found by David Agosto, whose 6-year-old son Daniel had gone missing along with 5-year-old Jesstin Pagan and 11-year-old Anibal Cruz.

Authorities have said if any law enforcement officials broke department rules in the search they would be disciplined. Police and prosecutors were expected to issue a report within 30 days on the handling of the search.

In addition to the formal review of the search, City Council President Angel Fuentes said the council also will hold a hearing on the matter at its regular meeting Thursday.

"I know my colleagues and I have questions," said Fuentes, whose district includes the area where the boys died.

Cruz, who has lived in Philadelphia for the past year since separating from his wife Alba, also blamed the state Division of Youth and Family Services for his son's death. He said he had called the agency several times in the past year to tell them his son, who was mentally disabled, was wandering away from home into the neighborhood.

However, he said DYFS did nothing to solve the problem.

"If he had been put in a safe place, maybe this would have never happened," Cruz said.

Andy Williams, a spokesman for the state Human Services Department, declined to comment Sunday on whether Cruz made phone calls to the agency, citing confidentiality issue. Williams said the department investigates after every call of potential abuse, neglect or child endangerment.

Dozens of officials had searched for two days for the boys, using helicopters, a bloodhound and divers who searched the nearby Delaware River. On Sunday, Police Lt. Mike Lynch said officials felt many of the same frustrations as Cruz, but said it was premature to speculate.

Article: Camden Stunned After Missing Children Found Dead

"Whatever the circumstances are, I can tell you that the efforts of those searchers and those police officers and everyone involved were 100 percent committed," he said.

One of the boys had played previously in the car, which was owned by Anibal's maternal grandmother. It had been sitting for about three weeks in a shaded, weedy corner of the Cruz family's yard.

The hydraulic plunger that keeps the trunk from closing was not working, so the lid was able to swing close and lock as soon as the boys stopped propping it up, prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi said.

Federal law requires cars made beginning in 2002 to have release latches inside the trunk, but the Toyota in which the boys were found appears to have been an older model.

Sarubbi said some periods of hard rain on Wednesday evening may have muffled any noises from the well-insulated trunk, which was parked far enough from the house to make it difficult to hear any voices coming from it.

A joint funeral service for the boys was tentatively scheduled for Wednesday in Camden. Both Agosto and Pagan will be buried Thursday in Camden, while Cruz will be buried in Puerto Rico at a later date.

Meanwhile, community members continued to deal with their grief. A steady stream of visitors stood under the hot sun outside the Cruz home Sunday, placing stuffed animals, balloons, candles and notes in front of a chain-link fence in the yard where the boys were last seen playing together.

For some, the grief over their loss was turning into frustration.

As he paid his respects area resident Luis Rodriguez, 55, asked why the police never thought to look in the car's trunk.

"Why wouldn't they think to look in a trunk? (Crime victims) get stuck in trunks all the time," he said.

At one point in the early afternoon, the scene at the Cruz home turned chaotic as news crews set up cameras on the sidewalk for an expected news conference that never occurred.

It was later learned that several media outlets had received a release from an unidentified man claiming to represent members of the Cruz and Pagan families, as well as their lawyers. However, family members said they did not know the man or why he made the claims.

Copyright 2005 by NBC10.com The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.